AI4citizens: Responsible AI for Citizen Safety in Future Smart Cities

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled the implementation of video surveillance solutions that enhance public safety by alerting authorities to crimes and safety breaches in real-time, often more effectively than human operators alone. However, these AI solutions face two significant challenges: concerns over privacy intrusion and public apprehension regarding their implementation and potential misuse. AI4citizens aims to create privacy-protecting, human rights-compliant public security AI models that notify authorities of safety breaches and facilitate object detection searches in video databases. In developing responsible AI tools, we adopt a multistakeholder approach, co-creating solutions with citizens, policymakers, law enforcement, and civil society groups to ensure equitable outcomes that safeguard human rights. AI4Citizens addresses the following four areas for implementing responsible AI in a societal security context: 1) Anonymization of Monitoring Data for AI Training and Information Distribution: This area investigates AI-based anonymization of video data to enhance human rights protections without compromising the effectiveness of alerts regarding public security needs. 2) Anonymous Crowd Monitoring for Event Detection: This initiative contributes to overall public safety by providing privacy-enhancing solutions that monitor crowds in public spaces. It assists human operators in monitoring centers by generating alerts for rare and unusual events, such as accidents, group loitering, and violence. 3) Contextual Video Object Search for Crime Prevention and Investigation: This area automates processes to help overcome the main challenge faced by human operators: manually searching through videos for specific objects or incidents in varying contexts. 4) Societal Impact and Ethical Implications of Anonymized Surveillance: This focus aims to enhance the trustworthiness of public surveillance systems by ensuring that human rights are upheld, that solutions are developed through co-creation with citizens, and that ethical dilemmas, algorithm aversion, and biases are addressed. By addressing these areas, AI4citizens seeks to create a more secure society while respecting individual rights and fostering public trust.

According to human rights standards and practice for the police that are put forward by the United Nations, police organisations shall serve four main objectives: (1) ensure compliance with democratically agreed laws; (2) prevent crimes; (3) respond to emergencies; and (4) provide supporting services to citizens. With the digitalisation of our society, on one hand, and on the other hand, the adoption of technologies to conduct sabotages, organised crimes, and terroristic attacks, police organisations are becoming depending on advanced technologies in order to deal with the amount and complexity of information that occurs during their day to day operations. Our research aims to study the appropriateness of using machine intelligence, also referred to as narrow artificial intelligence, in police operations to fulfill their mandate, and to foster human rights. Our interdisciplinary study comprises perspectives from the social and computing sciences, and works towards a balanced and responsible socio-technical approach in smart-city policing, where citizens can trust the police, and both co-create a safe and prosperous environment for everyone. The Nordic countries and Norway in particular have a long history of implementing organisations and policies for the benefit of mankind, i.e. with the founding of the UN in 1949. With our research we are miming to contribute to provide policies and technologies for using artificial intelligence in policing, to engage citizens and gain their trust in advanced technology support, and to minimize possibilities that machine intelligence is used to infringe fairness and freedom of citizens, and their human rights. The project brings together researchers in social and computing sciences, e.g. the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), NTNU, UiA, and BI. Project members also represent a wide range of citizens, and police, e.g. Oslo City Kommune, Nordic Edge Smart City Innovation, Oslo & Øst police.